Direct Bodily Empathy — Sound, Signal, Feedback

Spanning the Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa and international artists and collectives examine sonic relationalities and the politics of sound through a range of approaches. These include acoustic ecologies, where sound becomes a speculative tool for sensing and indexing biodiversity and climate volatility; concepts of ‘ear witnessing’, where audio material acts as legal evidence; and sound as a decolonial force, where musical composition unsettles acoustic histories while affirming Indigenous ways of being and knowing.

Staging sonic encounters, artists harness more-than-human co-performers, such as the wind, decomposing fruit, and native birdsong, to amplify the voices of weather systems, sonify carbon flows, and attune with the dawn chorus. Others compose warning sirens as harbingers of ecological feedback loops, or turn up the volume on ancestral rhythms to live by.

Through sound installations and sculptural assemblages, field recordings and experimental films, musical composition and archival interventions, lecture performances and deep listening experiences, the exhibition asks: What does a healthy ecosystem sound like? How can sound act as a decolonial gesture? What are the techno-politics of machine listening? What sirens and warnings are needed to survive the future?

Direct Bodily Empathy is a two-part exhibition series curated to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Len Lye Centre. The exhibition’s title pays homage to Len Lye’s notion of ‘bodily empathy’, a term that signals an attunement with the senses, or the transfer of elemental energies. While Sensing Sound amplified artists’ intentions through sonic structures, resonant objects, and shared vibration, Sound, Signal, Feedback asks: What can sound do? Here, alongside Len Lye, contemporary artists employ material sound for the transmission of meaning and as an input for action.

Key Dates

June 27:
Exhibition opening celebration and participatory public programmes and events

October 3:
Publication launch with Perimeter Editions

Stay tuned via our website and social media for more details.

Opening Day Programming: 

Artist floor talk with Simon Ingram
12pm - 12:30pm | Saturday 4 April

Join artist Simon Ingram in a floor talk about a new work inviting listening, watching and attention: Vibrating World: Rotokare Forest, 39.45254˚ S, 174.41727 ˚ E.

Vibrating World is an immersive two channel video surround sound manifestation of a section of pukatea-kahikatea swamp forest at Rotokare Reserve active with the calls of Kiwi, Korimako, Popokatea, Riroriro, Ruru, Titipounamu, and Toutouwai. The artist will share thoughts and experiences about the work’s background, its production and the value of working outside of what one knows and in collaboration with colleagues in conservation, science and computer graphics - each bringing different ways of paying attention to the life of the forest.

Vibrating World: Self-Guided Opportunity
10am - 5pm | Friday April 3 - Monday April 6 

Grab a free activity sheet from the front desk to explore the ideas in the artwork Vibrating World: Rotokare Forest, 39.45254˚ S, 174.41727 ˚ E, 2026 by Simon Ingram.
 
We invite you to carefully take note: listen, notice and ask vital questions!
You will begin in the gallery with Simon Ingram’s Vibrating World: Rotokare Forest, then take the experience out into the world extending to Rotokare Scenic Reserve—a rare, pest-free native bush region that inspired this work.

This is an invitation to connect art with care, and to consider how attention, curiosity, and action can support the taiao we live amongst. As you walk, listen closely to birdsong, observe the rhythms of the environment, and learn more about this special place in Taranaki.

More public programmes to be announced.
Follow us on Instagram to stay up to date with events at the gallery: 
@govettbrewster